Description

In 1975, National Airlines was shut down for 127 days when flight attendants went on strike to protest long hours and low pay. Activists at National and many other U.S. airlines sought to win political power and material resources for people who live beyond the boundary of the traditional family. In Deregulating Desire, Ryan Patrick Murphy, a former flight attendant himself, chronicles the efforts of single women, unmarried parents, lesbians and gay men, as well as same-sex couples to make the airline industry a crucible for social change in the decades after 1970.

Murphy situates the flight attendant union movement in the history of debates about family and work. Each chapter offers an economic and a cultural analysis to show how the workplace has been the primary venue to enact feminist and LGBTQ politics.

From the political economic consequences of activism to the dynamics that facilitated the rise of what Murphy calls the “family values economy” to the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, Deregulating Desire emphasizes the enduring importance of social justice for flight attendants in the twenty-first century.

Reviews

"Many factors fuse to make this book memorable. Deregulating
Desire tackles a complex subject with power, style, and immense energy. The narrative is fast-paced and action-packed. Chapters vie for preeminence, with drama, momentum, and escalating tension. The author, a former flight attendant and union activist, writes with conviction and clarity. He has an ear for telling quotes, an ability to unravel tangled situations, and a gift for retrieving, restating, and dissecting cultural messages. Any one of Murphy's riveting chapters will make the reader's next flight a new experience. Everyone will find something to admire in this startling and impressive book."
—Journal of American History

"Murphy explores the role feminist and queer activism played in flight attendants' fight for economic justice in the airline industry between the 1960s and today.... Murphy paints a picture where these activists have remained committed to fighting for social justice even as this occupation has become an increasingly precarious form of work. This book is important not only for those interested in social movements, labor unions, work, family, gender, and/or sexuality, but for those whose interests stand at the intersection of these areas of study."
—Contemporary Sociology

“Deregulating Desire is a stunning cultural analysis of political economy that explicates both the rise of neoliberal economic policies within the airline industry and flight attendants’ creative, activist response. Ryan Patrick Murphy shows us how the ‘family values economy’ came to operate and how flight attendants exploited the fissures within it. At this moment of divergent political responses to economic emergency, Murphy’s tale is as necessary as it is gripping.” —Nan Enstad, Professor of History, University of Wisconsin–Madison, and author of Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure: Working Women, Popular Culture, and Labor Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

“ Bravo! Murphy’s pioneering study captures the exuberance and courage of post-1960s flight attendants as they struggle for sexual equity and economic justice. By embracing the diverse desires and intimate relations of all workers, Deregulating Desire models a new affective labor history, as attentive to feelings as to economic self-interest.” —Dorothy Sue Cobble, Distinguished Professor of History and Labor Studies, Rutgers University, and co-author of Feminism Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women’s Movements

“ Ryan Patrick Murphy crafts a wholly innovative, interdisciplinary approach to the study of post-1970s trade unionism, placing the history of flight attendant activism alongside that of the women’s movement and LGBT politics. Murphy’s queer analytic lens smartly demonstrates both how big business interests capitalized on ideals of the normative family and domesticity and how activists challenged these ideas to fight for the rights of not only women and LGBT people but also single people. Deregulating Desire is an important and original contribution.” —Christina B. Hanhardt, Associate Professor in the Department of American Studies, University of Maryland–College Park, and author of Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence

“ Murphy’s efforts tend to focus on the battles between airlines and flight attendants over wages, work rules, and perceptions of family life and sexuality. However, there is much more here. Reading Deregulating Desire brings back to academic discussion not just the politics of airline labor markets but also the larger discussion of the politics and economics of the deregulation fervor of the late 1970s and early 1980s.... Summing Up: Highly recommended.” —Choice

"Deregulating Desire joins a much-needed trickle of queer labor histories that center workers who lived outside the heteronuclear family.... Murphy’s excellent study also draws fresh conclusions about the rightward turn in American culture and politics. One need only board a plane to experience how the shortcomings of formal legal equality and the unbridling of business interests have reshaped air travel. Airlines are increasingly treating customers with the same disrespect that has long defined their labor relations and forcing flight attendants to be the human face of inhumane policies. But these customers, who have a close-up view of flight attendants’ physical and emotional challenges, are also their potential allies. Deregulating Desire helps us to understand how we got here and how to make the skies friendlier for workers and consumers alike."— Labor

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction
1. Domesticity and Its Discontents: The Flight Attendant Union Upsurge of the Mid-1970s
2. Night Fever for a New Economy: The Struggle over Time and Money on the Cusp of the 1980s
3. (De)Regulating Desire: Family Values, Pro-work Politics, and the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978
4. Financializing Family Values: Flight Attendants and the Wall Street Revolution of the 1980s
5. United Airlines Is for Lovers: The Politics of Domesticity and Partnership in the 1990s
6. The Expense of Justice: Family Values and the Corporate Mergers and Acquisitions Business in the Twenty-First Century
Epilogue: The Future of the Flight Attendant Union Movement

About the Author(s)

Ryan Patrick Murphy—a former San Francisco–based flight attendant for United Airlines and Council Representative for Association of Flight Attendants–CWA Council 11—is Assistant Professor of History and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana.

Subjects

In the Series

Sexuality Studies, edited by Janice Irvine and Regina Kunzel, features work in sexuality studies broadly construed, in its social, cultural, and political dimensions, and in both historical and contemporary formations. The series includes titles located within disciplinary and interdisciplinary frames that combine theoretical methodologies with empirical research.